The Space Between
by Medieval Scribe
Summary: After rescuing the gang in Nettlestone, Allan-a-Dale has to come to terms with everything that happened in his absence.
1. Chapter 1: Prologue

Prologue

He sat still, his back to the wall, staring at the odd shadows cast by the guttering candles in the other room. Not for the first time in his life, Allan-a-Dale found himself at a crossroads. The road before him forked sharply, and he had to choose a path. The one path was inexorably evil, but led to a life of reward and luxury. The other was paved with good intentions, but its rewards were intangible and uncertain.

In his heart, he knew which path he would have to take. He would have to go back to Nettlestone to rescue the gang. He was just having a difficult time deciding why this was the right decision. Marian had done her best to impress on him the need to save the King, to save England. But he would not go back for king or country, because these things mattered little to Allan. His life would be the same no matter who was king.

He would not go back for Marian either. She was too daring and took for too many risks. The way he saw it, she was already dead. It was just a question of when, and Allan-a-Dale was not about to risk his life over that. He understood that he had to let Robin know of the danger to Marian, but there were ways to do that without going back.

So why was he going back, when staying meant money and power and a future without thieving or tricking (unless he wanted to)? Why was he going back, when being with Gisborne meant being on the right side of the law for a change? He could not put a finger on it, but he knew it had to something to do with the gang, with needing their friendship, with needing to know they still cared about him. But mostly, he knew it had something to do with Will and Djaq, the only two people in all the world that Allan thought of as family. He belonged with them…with the man who had called him brother that day in Nottingham, no matter how reluctantly, and the woman who had insisted on Allan's goodness, even when she knew that he had betrayed them. For them, he would go back, and gladly.

And with that thought, Allan chose his path, riding hard to Nettlestone, putting as much distance between him and the other, unchosen path as possible.


	2. Chapter 2: Portsmouth

Portsmouth

Allan-a-Dale did not notice it at first, and he cursed his blindness that he could not see what was so obvious in hindsight. True, the headlong rush to Portsmouth had left little time for observation, but still, now that he knew, it all seemed plain as day.

He should have noticed that the others gave Will and Djaq a wide berth, leaving them to their own devices most of the time. He should have noticed that Will was always just a little closer to her than he needed to be, but most of all, he should have noticed the way Djaq smiled at Will, an impossibly girlish expression he was certain he had never seen on her face before.

Of course, they had barely spoken to him, although Will had given him a friendly nod of the head in Nettlestone, and Djaq had patted his shoulder affectionately and thanked him for being a good man. Finally, he had been forced to ask Much what had happened, and Much had merely rolled his eyes and muttered something about confessions of love being better when they were kept secret.

That had been enough for Allan to put two and two together. Now that he knew, he was not sure how to feel about it. He was happy for them, certainly, and also desperately curious about how the painfully shy Will had ever made his feelings known. But he could not help the tightness he felt in his chest when he saw the two of them together, an odd sensation that was somewhere between dull ache and searing pain.

He knew he had feelings for Djaq, a lingering affection that had stayed with him even when she herself had not. A man other than Allan-a-Dale might have called it love, but not him. To Allan, love was just a word, a vague concept like gratitude or loyalty, things that only mattered to those who had been raised with coin in their pockets and food in their bellies instead of by a father who drank too much and a mother who gave up too soon. No, he could not say he loved Djaq, but that did not make things any easier for Allan.

Still, they were his two best friends, and he had no reason to assume things would be any different between the three of them. He knew he could rely on the fact that there would always be a space for him with Will and Djaq, and the thought became a buffer against envy and resentment, a balm that soothed the ache in his heart. Everything would soon be just as it had been before.

--

She watched him standing at the edge of the dock, only a smudge against the darkening sky. But Will was so tall and his stance so unmistakable that she could never take him for anyone else. _And I would know him anywhere,_ she thought, and she could not keep the smile off her face. She had been relieved beyond measure, that day in Nettlestone, to discover that the cold light of day had not given lie to her confessions of the night before. Still, she and Will had barely had a chance to even speak in all the chaos of their journey to Portsmouth, and she was glad to find him alone, even if only for a moment.

He heard her coming, and gave her a smile of his own. She could see that it was different from the way he smiled at the others, and the knowledge made Djaq's heart beat just a little faster.

"Will. What are you doing here, all by yourself?"

He pointed at the waves breaking near the edge of the dock. "I've never seen the sea before."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"I've never really been away from Nottinghamshire before." He ducked his head, apparently embarrassed by his lack of worldliness, but she just laughed in response.

"In that case, Will Scarlett, you are about to embark on a grand adventure indeed."

He laughed. "It's just another way that . . . I mean, I never imagined my life would turn out like this."

"Like this?"

"You know…with Robin, and going to the Holy Land…and," he hesitated. "And…and you."

Djaq blushed, feeling a sudden shyness she was sure even Saffiyah had never felt. Will put his hand on her shoulder, and though it was a gesture that had passed between them a hundred times before, everything was different now. His touch was gentle, his calloused fingers uncertain as they stroked the back of her neck. But it was enough to make her blood run faster, enough to make something pool in her stomach, delicious and molten, and so shocking in its intensity that it made her flinch.

He dropped his hand, and looked at her in alarm, obviously worried that he had stepped over some invisible line of propriety. She shook her head and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

"I…it's…I like it when you do that." There. It was simple and it was the truth. But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them, because Will looked as if he was about to die of embarrassment.

He looked away, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see red beginning to stain his cheeks. She cursed under her breath, wondering why everything between them had to be so awkward and uncertain. But then he turned back to face her, and brought his hand to her cheek.

"I'm glad, then." He said the words simply, and then, maybe because he did not know what else to say, he bent his head and kissed her, driving all thoughts of awkwardness and uncertainty from Djaq's mind.

--

From the shadows, Allan watched the two young lovers embrace, and the ache in his chest returned with great force. With just one small gesture, and without a word to him, Djaq and Will had erased any chance of Allan's perfect reunion with them, any chance that things could just be as they had been before. They had forged something new for themselves out of the space he had left behind, shutting him out as surely as if he had never existed. He felt the tides of envy and resentment lap at his heart, and slowly but surely, the murky waters invaded the space and filled the gaping hole left by his two closest friends. Nothing would ever be the same again.

--

"Fancy a pint, mate?"

Will turned on his heel, surprised to hear Allan address him in so familiar a way, especially as they had barely spoken since Allan had arrived at the barn in Nettlestone to deliver Will and the others from near-certain death.

"I don't think . . . Robin would . . ."

"Never mind about Robin. Just you and me. Like old times. C'mon, Will!"

There was something about the way the way he said the words, something about "like old times" that gave Will a sudden and sharp pain somewhere in his chest. _It will never be like old times, Allan._

Still, though Will could not easily forgive Allan his trespasses, he could not easily ignore that Allan has saved them all either, and indeed, that he had saved Will more than once. More than that, he knew that Djaq saw some good in Allan, and for her sake, he hoped to see it too.

"Fine. Just one pint. Where?"

"Oh, I dunno. Portsmouth's bound to have an inn or two, innit?"

Will could not help but chuckle in response. He suspected that Allan already knew where the inns in Portsmouth were, and that he would promptly take him to the shadiest and least appealing one of them all.

They walked a bit in relatively companionable silence, before Allan broke it with a sudden burst of laughter. "I'm not being funny, but you don't need the hood here, Will!"

Will was naturally cautious, and his first instinct had been to draw the hood of his cloak down low over his face. Robin was wary of his men being seen in public, and Will had no intention of being arrested.

"Nobody knows who we are here. Too far from Nottingham, mate."

Will whipped off his hood and nodded, slightly embarrassed and feeling out of his element. He needed to relax. It had been days since he'd had anything like a free moment, a chance to reflect on everything that had happened in the mad rush from Nettlestone to Portsmouth. And then there was the thing that had happened in Nettlestone. And Djaq. He found himself smiling unaccountably at just the thought of her, and suddenly wished she was going to the inn with him instead of Allan.

He was jolted out of his reverie when Allan clapped a hand on his shoulder. "And here we are. The Three Kings!"

The Three Kings did not quite live up to its lofty name. It was old and grubby, and neither the thatch on the roof nor the rushes on the floor had been replaced in what seemed like months. Allan did not seem to mind all that though, as he called someone over, and two pints of ale were deposited on the table, liquid sloshing messily over the sides.

"How much? That's daylight robbery! And I know a thing or two about daylight robbery!" The woman who had brought the ale shrugged and waited for Allan to pay her, holding out a grubby hand for the coin. Allan paid reluctantly, and then turned his attention back to Will.

"Drink up, mate. Who knows how long it'll be before you see England and its fine ale again?"

That thought was sufficiently alarming to make Will take a swig, and he soon discovered that the ale was even dodgier than the alehouse. Allan didn't seem to mind that either, though, downing his entire pint in one shot and calling for another.

Allan was just a little drunk, and this made Will even more cautious than usual. He regarded Allan out of the corner of his eye, wondering how he could extricate himself from this situation without simply leaving the other man behind.

He caught Allan fixing him with a surprisingly steady gaze, and something about Allan's expression made the hair on Will's neck stand up.

"So. . ." Allan began, his speech still unslurred by all the ale. "You and Djaq."

Will stiffened; the tankard of ale stopped halfway to his mouth. So they had finally come to it. He was aware that Allan cared for Djaq, but he'd always ignored that, the way you ignored the stench of dead animals in the forest once you got used to it. He sighed and shrugged in response, not really wanting to discuss Djaq with Allan.

"You should've told me, mate." Allan's tone was as matter-of-fact as ever, but Will thought he detected something else in it, an accusation. Not "you should have told me" but "you should have asked me".

Will felt a sudden rush of anger. "I would have told you, if you'd stayed. But you left, you betrayed us. You made your bed."

Allan raised an eyebrow at him, and then he laughed, but it was an odd and mirthless sort of sound, and it made Will shiver. "You missed your real calling, Will. Should've been a priest, you. You're so righteous and good. Always doing the right thing, yeah?" He spat the words out, his tone all the more remarkable for the sudden and complete absence of any of his usual forced cheer.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, you know what it means." Allan slammed his tankard down on the table, making Will flinch at the sudden motion. "It means you always come out smelling like roses, when I come out smelling like the castle privy."

Will narrowed his eyes and clenched a fist under the table, trying to control his anger and his tongue. There was a voice in his head that sounded surprisingly like Djaq telling him to end this, to leave the place before there was trouble. But there was also another voice, a morbidly curious one that was telling him to press on, to see where he and Allan would take this.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Allan cut him off, his voice now eerily quiet and surprisingly menacing. "You're an outlaw, a thief. What makes you think you're so much better than everyone else? So much better than me?"

"Allan . . ." Will kept his voice low and even, hoping the other man would hear the warning in his tone and stop his ranting.

But Allan took no heed of Will's voice. "You scarpered off to Scarborough willingly enough, and when we came back, nobody said a word to you, but they all looked at me cross-eyed, didn't they? You ran off to kill the Sheriff because you were in a snit, and everyone just felt sorry for you. I ran off, and I come back to everyone calling me a traitor." Allan paused, taking a long swig. "I get all the crap, and you get all the glory."

Will smirked as one of the dark whispers formed itself into a thought. He would regret it later, but the words were out of his mouth before he could really think better of them. "That's right, Allan. And now I get the girl too."

Allan looked stricken, but only for a moment, and he quickly schooled his expression back to normal. He gave Will another mirthless chuckle. "Oh the gettin's the easy bit, mate. Keepin' a girl is a lot harder!"

Will began to speak, but his words were drowned out by Allan's.

"What do you even know about Djaq, Will? Do you know what she was before she was with us? She's like . . ." Allan seemed to be searching for the words, and as he waited for Allan to finish, Will could hear alarm bells going off on in his head. "She's some kind of noble . . . and she knows things we've never even heard of . . . she can read and write in, like, five languages." Allan stood now and leaned over Will, as if taunting him. "And you, you're so simple, you can't even see that you don't belong with her . . . you're just a simple peasant with an axe who can barely write his own name."

Will allowed his indignation to mix with his anger, and the two emotions left an acrid taste in his mouth. "And you belong with her? What are you, Allan, some sort of scholar?"

"Oh, me? Don't need learnin', mate. I got this." He patted a small bag of coins hanging from his belt.

Will stood up, towering over Allan. "You can't buy someone like Djaq . . . she's . . ."

"Oh, you can buy everyone, Will. Everyone has a price. Even your precious little Dj . . ."

He never managed to finish the thought, because, just then, Will's left fist made violent contact with Allan's face.


	3. Chapter 3: Healing

Healing

It was Robin who found Allan and Will, bloodied and bruised, skulking in the shadows. They had scuffled, each landing a few more punches and drawing a little more blood, before the innkeeper had enough and threw them out. They had somehow, and separately, made their way back to the abandoned warehouse that Robin had turned into their makeshift digs in Portsmouth.

"Brawling? Drunken brawling?" Robin shook his head as he vented his anger. "What brought this on? Are you both out of your bloody minds?"

Allan shrugged, unable to think of anything to say that would make sense. It did not escape his attention that Robin's ire was directed entirely at him, and that he hardly even looked in Will's direction as he spoke. _Is it always going to be like this? _

He heard Robin sigh and sit down heavily on the ground in front of them. Robin seemed utterly exhausted, and this surprised Allan. For the first time, he was forced to consider what being an outlaw had cost Robin, how tired he was from the strain of fighting for what he believed in, while trying to keep a ragtag band of misfits together and working like a unit. He felt a sudden sympathy for Robin, and with it, a new surge of guilt over his own actions.

"Robin, I'm sorry…I never meant to do this. It just happened."

"Save it, Allan. I don't want any excuses." Robin looked away, and for several minutes, silence hung in the air, as pregnant as a dark cloud before the rain, and just as menacing. When Robin finally spoke, it was in a tone that allowed no disagreement.

"Just promise me that it won't happen again. I won't have this, Allan." He fixed Allan with a steady gaze, forcing him to nod in response.

"Good. Now get yourself over to Djaq. I don't want you bleeding to death!"

--

"So what happened to you?" Her tone was perfectly matter-of-fact, but Allan could hear the amusement in her voice.

"Oh nothing, really. Got a bit too friendly with one of the girls at the inn, if you know what I mean." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and hoped that it would mask his discomfort, his guilt over what he had said about Djaq just a few hours before.

She laughed, and began to dab at his face with a wet cloth. Allan hissed in pain when she got a bit too close to his bloodied nose. "A girl did this to you? For shame."

He knew she was only joking, but suddenly, Allan was not in the mood for jest. He had a desperate need to speak something like the truth to someone, and Djaq was here, and she had always been more willing to see him for who he really was anyhow. She would understand how alone he was, how much he needed her, how much he wanted to just go back to a time before he had left all of them.

"No, actually. It was Will." Her hand stilled immediately, and she stepped back from him, her brow furrowed.

"Will? He…hit you?"

"Yeah, he did."

"Why?"

Allan shrugged. He decided it was better for her to come to her own conclusions. And besides, Will would undoubtedly tell her what had really happened anyhow.

"He did quite well. Your nose is broken." She had reverted to her usual rational tone, but Allan detected an edge of…something that he could not quite understand. Anger? Surprise? Disappointment.

"How bad is it?"

"Bad. But I think you'll survive, Allan-a-Dale."

"I always do, don't I?"

At this, she chuckled, and then admonished him to stay still while she cleaned a small cut on his lip. Her touch warmed Allan, waking feelings he thought he had put to bed already. She was tantalizingly close to him now, and it would be so easy to just . . .

"So tell me again. Why did Will hit you?"

"It doesn't really matter, does it?"

"It does. It matters to me." She looked at him pointedly, and he quailed a little under her gaze.

"It would, wouldn't it. Because you're…" He let his voice trail off, knowing that Djaq did not need the words to understand him. Still, just as he had not been able to keep from provoking Will, he could not quite resist the urge to question Djaq, to make her feel some of the uncertainty that he himself felt.

"But it's weird, though, innit? You and Will." He met her gaze steadily. "What do you see in him anyway? He's all loyal and honest and 'I'm good with wood' all the time."

She arched an eyebrow, but her face betrayed nothing else as her fingers made warm trails near his nose. "You talk as if those are bad things."

"No, not bad things. But Djaq, he's just a boy. Don't you think you'd be better off with...someone else?"

"Allan…" Her voice was a double-edged sword, regret that she could not give him the answer he wanted mingling with a warning that he was going too far.

He pretended not to hear her. "If I hadn't left…" He leaned forward, aching to kiss her and somehow end whatever it was she had with Will, so they could go back to how things were, to when things still made sense to Allan.

He never managed to finish the thought, because, just then, Djaq's fingers gently pushed the broken bit of his nose back into place, and Allan forgot his words in the blinding flash of pain that followed.

--

She watched him from a distance for a while, to see if she could gauge his mood. But so far, Will had shown no sign of any emotion, remaining silent and oddly defiant as he sat in the shadows.

She sighed and approached him, noticing his injuries for the first time. There was a deep gash over one eye, bloody and angry, the only clear indication that he had been in a scuffle. She still found it hard to believe that he had started a fight. That Will's calm exterior belied an angry soul was not new to her. But until now, his rage had always been aimed at injustice and unfairness, and at those men who perpetuated both. She had trouble wrapping her mind around the fact that his anger could be directed at one of their own, so she latched on to the first legitimate explanation that came to her.

"Are you drunk?"

He seemed to notice her only then, and looked at her in surprise. "What? No!"

"Really?" She raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms, demanding a better answer.

He gave her a small and sheepish smile. "Well…maybe just a little." He looked not so much drunk as lost, and she was sharply reminded of Allan's words. _He's just a boy_. She shook her head and shoved the thought away as she leaned over him and began cleaning his wound.

"So. What happened?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, really. Allan…" He seemed to be at a loss for words, so Djaq supplied them for him.

"Allan punched you in the eye?"

He smirked in response. "No. I got that because I fell. Corner of a table, I think."

"Well, that was silly of you."

He laughed this time, and perhaps it improved his mood, because he brought his hands to her waist and embraced her. Or rather he tried, but failed, a terrible wince crossing his face as he tried to flex the fingers of his left hand.

"I think Allan broke my hand."

She reached down and took his hand in her own. His little finger was clearly broken, and perhaps the ring finger as well, and if she did not set them right away, they would be mangled.

She sighed. "No, I think _you _broke your hand. When you broke Allan's nose." She looked at him pointedly, and he nodded and then dropped his gaze. She began to splint his fingers together, asking him if it hurt as she tried to set the fingers back.

He grunted something in response, and she let her fingers wander over his hand for a moment, liking the sensation and wondering that she could even think of something other than his broken bones at a time like this.

His hand was pale against her own, the fingers calloused after a lifetime spent crafting wood. This was a hand meant to make things whole, not break things, and the thought saddened her and made her ache for things to be right between Will and Allan again.

"What did you and Allan fight about?"

He stiffened. "I don't know. Just Allan being Allan, I suppose."

"That is not an answer, Will."

"It's not important." He did not meet her eyes, and she knew he was keeping something from her. Will was terrible at telling lies, and even worse at telling half-truths. She thought to press him, but she noted his squared shoulders and the determined set of his jaw and knew that she would get nothing out of him.

She sighed and decided to try a different tack. "Will, I really think you should…talk to Allan. Try to make your peace with him. It's important to me."

"Why?" He did look at her now, his gaze sharp and intense.

"Why? Because he came back! He saved us…all of us!"

"No, I mean…why is it so important to you?"

She frowned. "Because…because Allan is a good man, and he deserves…"

He cut her off almost immediately, snatching his hand away from hers so quickly and with such violence that Djaq flinched and stepped away from him.

"Why do you say that, Djaq? Why do you _always_ say that?"

She shrank back, wary of Will's sudden anger. But then she collected herself, determined not to be cowed by him. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means…" He took a deep breath. "You think I'm simple, don't you? That I'm so simple that I don't understand anything…that I can't see how things are?"

She watched him in confusion, unsure of what he was saying.

"Well, Djaq. You don't have to worry about simple Will Scarlett anymore. You and Allan, you're welcome to each other. I won't stand in your way!" With that, he stormed off, leaving Djaq completely alone.


	4. Chapter 4: Thinking

Thinking

Djaq sighed and then uttered every foul curse she could think of. Why were men so infernally stupid? Why did they always resort to fighting when just talking would be more than enough? Why did they have to be at the edge of death to make their feelings known with something other than fists and swords?

Of course, it was not quite that simple, nor was it even really about the particular failings of men. It was about love. It was not that men were stupid but that love made them so, whether love of a woman, or of money, or of power. And indeed, if she were honest, she had to admit that love had made her stupid as well.

She had spent a lifetime building walls around herself, each brick of propriety carefully held in place by mortar made of self-denial and discipline. Over the years, she had strengthened the walls by hardening her heart to her own emotions, refusing to feel anything more than was necessary for basic survival. The walls kept her safe from the world, impervious to any thought, word or deed that could harm her, from without or within. But those walls had come crashing down in a torrent of words and emotions in the dim light of an English barn, and had left her raw and vulnerable in an uncertain world.

In the immediate aftermath of her confession in Nettlestone, she had not troubled herself over losing these carefully cultivated layers of protection. She was exhausted, and with all the time she had spent protecting others from the world, she was content instead to let Will be her bulwark against the world. After all, she had given him her heart, and it was only fair that he should shoulder the burden of protecting her when she was too tired to do it herself. But it was only now that she realized that although Will's love was a shield against the rest of the world, it afforded her no protection from Will himself. Indeed, exactly the opposite was true. Love had given Will's words new meaning, imbued them with the power to hurt her. It was like having her own sword turned on her, and she shivered violently at the thought.

She shook her head, trying to banish all this _feeling_, trying to just _think_. Night had fallen in Portsmouth, and outside, she could see Robin and Much, partly shrouded in darkness, warming themselves by a fire. Further in the distance, she could just make out the shape of Will, leaning against a post of some sort, and although it was too dark and he was too far away for her to be certain, she had an odd feeling that he was watching her. She felt her knees give way, and for the first time in a terribly long time, she could feel tears pricking her eyes. She sank to her feet and held her head in her hands, determined not to let the tears come. It was more difficult than she had imagined, because although she was more given to reason than emotion, she could not ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach or the terrible ache in her chest. She dug her fingernails into her arm, wincing at the pain, but willing herself to feel something else, something real, something she could fix. Slowly, the tidal wave of emotion ebbed away, leaving her feeling empty but calm as she came back to herself.

Somewhere, in the part of her mind she left intentionally free of emotion, she knew that this was all just a puzzle to be solved. To solve a puzzle, she needed facts, cold and reasonable, and without any power to hurt. Her mind began to turn over what had happened, replaying her conversation with Will over and over again. His words had stung her as sharply as if he had slapped her, but now that she had a moment to reflect, she was unsure what he had actually tried to tell her. The plain meaning was clear enough, with its insinuation that she thought him too simple to love and that he had released her so she could be with Allan if she wanted.

She dismissed the latter thought out of hand. The words had been said in anger, but there was no malice in them, and although she had unwittingly given Will the power to wound her, he lacked the intent to do so. For one, she was as certain of Will's feelings as she was of her own. He would not want to let her go so easily. For another, she could scarcely believe that he would think her so fickle. Others might be tempted to believe such things of her, simply because she was a woman, and women were often so terribly inconstant. But such a thought would never have come to Will. . . unless someone else had put the idea in his head.

The other part of what Will had said, the part about being too simple—now, that was a different matter. It intrigued her because she suspected there was a kernel of truth in it. She did think he was simple, but hardly in the derisive way he had intended it. He was straightforward and honest, a peaceful and certain presence in a world where both peace and certainty were so rare. He was a simple man, yes, but it was because he saw the world simply, as good or evil, as black or white, as right or wrong. There was nothing wrong with such simplicity, and indeed, she accounted it one of Will's great charms. And yet, with this simple worldview came an unbending reluctance to accept anything less than the complete truth. It was a view that did not tolerate the personal failings of any man. There was no room for error in Will's world, and the fallen simply remained fallen.

She sighed. As much as she could admire and even agree with Will's truth, it was just sometimes easier to be more like Allan. He had a much different conception of truth, as a sort of amorphous and changeable quantity, a mere guideline rather than an absolute. And while she could never quite digest how easily the lies came to Allan or accept that he told them merely for convenience, she knew that he had the greater capacity to forgive his fellow man. In the mistakes of others, Allan would see his own, and so he was less quick to judge. It was this lack of judgment, and the attendant lack of hypocrisy, that Djaq found most endearing about Allan.

And well...Allan was not simple. No, not by far. He was like skin draped over an intricate web of deception and lies, the worst of which were the ones he told himself. Underneath all the false cheer and his devil-may-care attitude, his life was as flimsy as those houses he sometimes made out of playing cards when he was bored. Pull just one card out and the whole thing would collapse. Allan's life was in desperate need of support, a pillar to lean on.

That realization brought with it other new and vague thoughts, including the one that began to form in her mind, a thought that she was somehow responsible for Will's and Allan's current predicament. She knew that they were not fighting over her, of course. She was too practical, or perhaps too insufficiently vain, to give any credence to such a thought. Still, she could not easily dismiss the thought that these two had fought about her. Or perhaps about her and Will. Had Allan, rudderless and looking for someone to lean on, provoked Will somehow? Had Will, content in his newfound love, rejected Allan's offer of friendship? Whatever it was that had passed between them, it was clear to her that she, or perhaps she and Will as a couple, were somehow involved.

Djaq's thoughts chased themselves around her mind, always leading her back to the same conclusion. Hours had passed since she had first started pondering all this, and she could feel her eyes draw shut with exhaustion. In truth, there was nothing here to spend so much time thinking about. Allan needed a pillar to prop up his house of cards, and as far as she was concerned, Will was that pillar. He was steady and constant, and she was certain he would ultimately find it in his heart to forgive Allan. There was only one way to ensure that this would happen. She would somehow have to remove herself from their lives.

--


	5. Chapter 5: Journey

Journey

_The Portsmouth docks_

She tied the small bundles of herbs together, finding solace in so routine and simple a task, a measure of calm that had been sorely absent from her life for the past few days. It was only in the past hour that it had finally dawned on her that she was going home. Home…she had not allowed herself to think of the word for so long that even the sound of it seemed strange. Long-suppressed memories began to trickle back into her mind, some pleasant, some not, but all oddly comforting just the same. She allowed herself a rare daydream, but her reverie was quickly interrupted when Robin walked by.

"Djaq! I was hoping to find you here." Robin's voice had none of its usual impish cheer, but there appeared to at least be a spring in his step, and Djaq suspected it had something to do with the fact that they would be on their way soon, and he would be that much closer to finding Marian.

"You found a map, then!"

"Yes…or rather, Allan did. I have no idea where or how…" Robin's voice trailed off, and he gave her a look that said he would rather not know how Allan had got hold of the map.

He spread it out on the ground in front of Djaq. She recognized that it was a map of France, although many of the names and markings on the map were unfamiliar to her.

"We'll cross here, to Caën," he said, as his finger swept over a patch of sea between England and France. "From there, we'll travel through France and Italy, and hopefully, we will be able to find passage on a ship from there to the Holy Land."

Djaq shivered, the thought of _another_ journey by sea filling her with dread. Even the relatively short ferry trip across the English sea was more than she was willing to face, even though it had been almost two years since she first arrived in England, and her first voyage to these shores should have been long forgotten. She had known that they would soon board a ship, considering England was an island and traveling over the oceans was the only way to get to the Holy Land. But now, hearing Robin speak of it made the journey and her fear far more real and palpable.

Robin seemed not to notice and continued talking as he rolled up his map. "I think we're only a day behind the Sheriff and Gisborne. If we travel light and move fast, we should be able to keep that pace. We need to get to the king before it's too late…"

She noted that Robin said nothing about Marian, but she expected all his thoughts ran in that direction. A week ago, such determined pursuit of a single human being would have amused her, but now she could at least begin to see what really drove Robin, and she suddenly felt a great wave of sympathy for the man. Not for the first time, it occurred to Djaq that love must be one of life's great tragedies rather than one of its great triumphs.

She sighed and Robin gave her a strange look. "Djaq…do you trust me?"

She frowned at him, and considered the question for a moment. She had never had reason not to trust him, and she had no idea why he would ask such a question now.

"Yes, of course, Robin. Why do you . . .?"

"It's just that…well…" Robin scratched his head and looked lost for a second, but then he nodded and continued.

"The part of France we'll be traveling through is loyal to King Richard. Most of his men, almost all the Crusaders are from there."

Comprehension came to Djaq quickly. "And they would not understand why one of the king's most loyal men travels with a Saracen."

Robin looked genuinely sad for a moment.

"Do you wish me to remain here, then? In England?" Djaq thought for a moment. "I could find my way back to Sherwood. It would not be too difficult." She held her breath, the thought of returning to a familiar place where things made sense lifting her spirits even as it saddened her to find the possibility of returning home receding quickly out of her reach.

"No, of course not. You are one of us. And more than that, you will be needed on this journey."

Djaq let out the breath. "So what do you want from me?"

"Don't misunderstand me, Djaq. I'm just trying to make sure that…I just think it would be better if there was no…unpleasantness…on our journey."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You wish me to remain hidden somehow? What are you going to do? Put me in a box and carry me as luggage?"

Robin looked stunned for a minute, but he recovered quickly and laughed. "No, no. But it might be…easier…if people did not know you were…er…a woman."

It was Djaq's turn to be stunned. "I…I'm not…" She nodded and gave him a weak smile. "You mean it will be safer. For you. And for me." Distracted, she ran a hand through her hair and instantly regretted it because Robin seemed to think she was lamenting the impending loss of her longer locks.

Robin put a hand on her shoulder. "I am sorry, Djaq. I know it's going to be hard for you, but I really can't think of another way."

She nodded. "It's all right, Robin. I did it before, you know."

He gave her a grateful smile. "If you like, I can talk to Will…make sure that he…"

Djaq bristled. Not Will, of all people. "No, Robin. I can take care of it myself. I don't need help just because I'm…"

"Yes, I know…you don't need help just because you're a girl!" Robin sounded exasperated, but something about his expression made Djaq laugh, and she was glad for the levity, if only for a moment.

"So what happened with Will and Allan, anyway?"

Djaq shrugged, not willing to share her thoughts about those two with Robin. "Nothing serious. But wounded pride is hard to fix with just a needle and thread."

Robin chuckled and then shook his head. "It's just odd. It's not like the two of them to brawl."

Djaq smirked. Robin was wrong, of course. It was just like Allan and Will to brawl. The only odd thing was that it had taken them this long to get to it. It was also just like Robin not to notice. He had all the qualities of a great general. He was a good soldier, a quick thinker and a decisive actor. He knew the strengths of his men and demanded action accordingly. But with all this came the failure to see his men as anything more than soldiers in the cause, a failure to see that his men were mere men, with all the usual foibles and flaws that came with being only flesh and blood. Indeed, Djaq suspected it was this omission in Robin's personality that had led to Allan's departure, but it was unfair to lay all the blame for that on Robin. To care for the ordinary needs of his men beyond food and shelter was perhaps one charge too many, even for Robin. No, it would have to be her charge instead.

She turned to him. "Do _you_ trust _me_, Robin?"

There was no hesitation. "Absolutely."

"Then leave Allan and Will to me. I'll sort them out." The only question that remained now was how.

--

_The ferry to Caën _

Will watched England ebb away, the coastline only a dark blur against a gray sky as the ferry made its way across the sea. The water was choppy, and the roll and pitch of the boat was a constant reminder that they were no longer on dry land.

Although it had taken several hours for him to adapt his gait to the motion of the boat, his feet felt reasonably steady. His mind was a different matter altogether. He felt a bit like the sand at Porstmouth, shifting and changing, not at all like the hard-packed earth in Sherwood Forest or the loamy soil in the fields in Locksley. It was not that he was frightened, of course. There was the possibility that this journey would end badly for all of them, but they lived with that sort of fear every day, and Will himself had been far too close to death too many times to think of it as anything but inevitable.

That did not make this particular journey any less disconcerting. There was the fact that for all of his bluster, Robin did not have an actual plan for saving King Richard. Of course, Robin rarely had an actual plan. He worked mostly on instinct and sheer bravado, and Will was both awed and amused by it. But it was one thing to fly by the seat of your pants in Nottingham, where you could escape into Sherwood Forest, where the trees would give you shelter and the leaves would keep your secrets. Where did you run to in the Holy Land?

The Holy Land. He shivered, frightened by the thought. The place was so far beyond his knowledge and even his dreams that he could not imagine it, except as a vast blankness out _there_ somewhere. It was half a continent and an entire ocean away, and there would be no way to run back to the camp if things went awry.

The Holy Land was also Djaq's home, but that thought did not comfort as he had expected it to. It only served to pound home Allan's suggestion that Will hardly knew anything about her. He cursed himself for not having thought to ever ask her about her home, in spite of all the time they had spent together and all the things they had spoken of. Of course, he had never considered that he would ever need to know. He had grown used to the idea that Sherwood was her home…_their_ home.

He shook his head, irked by the idea that there was so much distance between him and Djaq, more than there had ever been when they were only friends, and not…whatever it was they were now. And besides, he could not shake the feeling that there was something very wrong with Djaq just now.

She was not speaking to him, of course. That was as much as he deserved for lashing out at her, but he had not meant any of it, and he was not concerned that Djaq was angry with him. It was not like her to be angry, at least not for this long, and he had no doubt she had understood whatever idiotic thing he had said in anger. But she was the sort who sought you out and asked you for an explanation, and it troubled him greatly that she had not done this so far.

That was not even the only thing that troubled him about Djaq. He had watched in confusion as she had cut off her hair with some help from Much. The cutting itself did not bother him. It was only hair, and if it made a difference to her appearance, it was not something that stood out in his mind. He supposed it might even be safer for everyone to assume she was a boy. He was far more bothered by the fact that she had not sought him out at all, not for help with her hair, not even just to sound him out as she usually did.

It was possible that she was scared, of course. He recalled vividly the night she had told him about her first terrible journey to England. He had thought that another ship's journey would have frightened her, that the prospect of returning home after everything she had been through would be daunting. Yet when they had boarded the ferry, he had noticed nothing out of the ordinary, nothing except the determined expression and efficient manner she used when she was collecting herbs or sewing up a wound. He shook his head. This was Djaq. She was never frightened. Something else was wrong.

The boat lurched suddenly, and as he gripped the rails to steady himself and keep from falling, it came to him. His first instinct was right. She _was_ afraid. But it was not of the ship, or the journey, or even the prospect of returning home. She was afraid of him. Of _them_.

--


	6. Chapter 6: Planning

Planning

_Outside Caën_

"Not being funny, but you're going about this all wrong."

Four pairs of eyes, and one very shapely eyebrow, arched apparently in amusement, greeted Allan's statement. They were a day and a half south of Caën, and Robin was beginning to worry that Vaysey and Gisborne had gone too far ahead. He had suggested trading for some horses, perhaps even using what little coin they had to buy them from a merchant he had met earlier in the day. The others had murmured their various opinions: that it was hard to find a good horse so far from a city; that they hardly had enough goods or coin for one good horse, much less six of them; that they could not possibly ride two-to-a-horse for more than a few minutes anyhow; that they would have to buy more horses later.

Allan had kept silent during the discussion, listening with amusement while trying to hatch a better scheme at the same time. It had come to him just as Much had begun another exasperated rant about being tired and hungry. When he finally spoke, however, it stunned all the others into silence. Well, not _all_ the others, apparently.

"Oh? All wrong, are we? Have you got a better way then?"

"Yeah, now that you mention it, I do."

Much, thankfully, had nothing more to offer. Robin seemed interested, though, as he politely cocked his head in Allan's direction in a wordless request to continue.

"So. We're outlaws, yeah? Why don't we just steal the horses?"

Much snorted. "That's your answer to everything, isn't it? Lying, stealing…"

"I'll say it again. We're outlaws! Stealin's what we do best, and we've stolen plenty of horses before!"

Robin laughed. "That's true. We've certainly done it before." He scratched thoughtfully at his chin. "But it's one thing to steal from the Sheriff. I'd rather not steal from an honest horse merchant."

Allan balked. "C'mon, mate. You know as well as I do, there's no such thing as an honest horse merchant."

Behind him, someone stifled a laugh. Robin gave Allan a searching look, and then he shrugged, apparently defeated by the Allan's logic. "So, then. What's the plan?"

"Ah, see. It goes like this…"

--

Allan stretched out in a dark corner of the inn, keeping a close eye on his mark. Gervase, the horse merchant Robin had dealt with, had walked into the tavern an hour before, with Allan following closely behind him. The plan was to simply steal back whatever Robin had paid the man for the horses. This was a task that Allan was plainly well-suited for, but even though it was his idea, he was not sure he liked it much. It had all the subtlety of a bludgeon to the head with Little John's quarterstaff. A good trick took time and patience, but those were luxuries they simply could not afford on this journey, and Allan resigned himself to the role of pickpocket. He expected it would not be too complicated, for Gervase was proving to be an easy mark, a boastful drunk who flaunted his coin just a little too much. Allan relaxed, biding his time.

By nature, he was a patient man. Life as a thief required it, after all, and waiting gave ample opportunities to plan his next move. If there was one thing about this particular wait that bothered Allan, it was that it reminded him strongly of all the times he had waited for Gisborne at the Trip Inn. But this was different. There was no need to be looking over his shoulder this time. This time, Allan-a-Dale was not in it for himself. He was doing this for someone else. He was making himself useful.

Allan had spent much of the journey from Portsmouth to Caën being entirely resentful of the rest of the gang. To him, it seemed like not too much to ask that they should be at least a bit grateful to the man who had saved their lives. Granted, a sixth man in the fight would not have made much difference in a real battle with those mercenaries. But his arrival and his trickery had bought them a few precious minutes and given them the element of surprise. It had been the difference between a narrow escape and almost certain death. Did this not call for some show of gratitude?

Instead, they had mostly given him their indifference, neither shunning him completely nor welcoming him fully back into the fold. Nobody had really spoken to him since they had left Portsmouth. Little John would occasionally grunt in his direction, a sound that fell somewhere between deep disappointment and grudging acceptance, and Much's statements, frequently laced with the word "traitor," were as derisive as always. There were days when Allan understood their disappointment and felt appropriately guilty for having betrayed them. But there were other days when he was indignant about the way they were treating him. He told himself that it was because they did not understand the lure of money the way he did. Money was never just coin. It meant freedom, the chance to be your own man. It meant a life without fear of arrest or worse, a chance that you would never have to see your own kin hang from a gibbet.

At first, he thought that maybe Robin understood, in spite of everything. Of all the people in the gang, it was only Robin who had approached him on the ferry to France, thanking him for his help with the maps in Portsmouth, engaging him in conversation. Allan had been so utterly elated by Robin's apparent acceptance that, at first, he did not even notice that Robin always talked only about what the Sheriff and Gisborne were up to. It struck Allan too late that Robin was more interested in any information that he might have than in welcoming him back with open arms.

Still, he could not bring himself to fault Robin for this. His return to the gang had fanned the embers of his guilt into a raging fire, and he was forced to admit that most of this was his own fault. Whatever his reasons for turning to Gisborne, he could not deny that he had let the gang down. Robin's mission had lost its luster, and with it, that grand sense of purpose which made all their missions possible had been lost too. He did not have the power to undo what was done, but he told himself he could make amends, somehow restore to Robin the strength of his convictions.

Allan liked to think he understood a thing or two about conviction. After all, he had come back to Robin when staying with Gisborne would have been so much more lucrative, and was that not a sign that he was a man of conviction? He shook his head. He could fool himself, and sometimes other people, into believing something like that, but the truth was that it was not conviction that had brought him back. It was fear.

In the end, he had been afraid. Not of dying, or of the king's justice, or any of the sort of things that men usually feared. He had been afraid to be alone, unloved and at sea in the world. He had not wanted to end up like Gisborne, pinning all his hopes on the small chance that some one person might see the good in him. So he had come back, not to Robin, but to _them_, the two who had once seen good in him, and might again, if he played his cards right.

But there had been no chance for that. He had come back to them, only to find that they loved not him, but each other, and that it no longer mattered to them that Allan-a-Dale was a good man. He had cursed himself that day, not because he had never told her what he felt for her, but because he had left far too much to chance. As long as it had been the three of them together, Allan had never had any cause for concern. They had drawn a line in the sand and none of them dared cross it. But the line had been wiped clean by his betrayal, and he could not unmake it, no matter how desperately he had tried to unmake _them_.

Allan frowned, a thought coming to him suddenly. Perhaps things were not going so well for Will and Djaq after all. They had been acting strange lately, and Allan was certain he had not seen them together since before they had left England. Neither of them had spoken to him, of course, but that was only to be expected under the circumstances, and he had expected they would eventually forgive him for that, or at least forget. But whatever it was he had said, it was having a far more pronounced effect. A small bud of happiness arose in his heart, his spirits lifting at the thought that perhaps there was a chance for him, just the tiny opening that he needed. He smiled to himself, but soon felt a now all too familiar feeling of guilt come over him.

Will and Djaq. They were his closest friends, his kin almost. They were the only two who had not demanded an apology from him, nor expected that he would make it up to them. And yet, they were the two who deserved his remorse the most. Just being with the gang would never be enough. Just being useful was not going to get him anywhere. He had to make amends somehow…for everything that he has done to them.

He began to ponder how exactly he would go about this, when his attention was drawn back to his task. Gervase, now quite far gone in his drunkenness, was getting up to leave the tavern. Allan followed at a safe distance, pleased at how simple this was going to be. And if turned out that Gervase had a few more shillings in his purse than what Robin had paid for the horses, well, that was just all in a good day's work for Allan-a-Dale.

--


	7. Chapter 7: Of Horses and Churches

**Of Horses and Churches**

_Several weeks later, outside Dijon, France_

Djaq watched as Allan tore through the small copse of trees where the rest of them waited and fell to his knees, panting.

He spoke between huge gasps of breath. "No time. Have to get out of here. Now!"

The others merely looked at him in confusion. It had been weeks since Allan had come up with the plan to steal horses, and they had repeated it with varying degrees of success every time they had needed fresh mounts. This was, however, the first time they had any trouble with it.

"What happened?" Robin looked more annoyed than concerned.

"These two goons, yeah?" Allan stood up, still a bit winded. "They saw me nick the merchant's purse. Tried to follow me, but I lost them." He shrugged. "Don't know for how much longer though."

That was when Djaq noticed the dark stain slowly starting to spread on the side of Allan's shirt.

"Allan! You are hurt!" She ran over to him and touched his side, trying to inspect the wound, but he leapt back at her touch.

Much seemed shocked. "You're bleeding! You killed the horse merchant!"

"What? No! I didn't kill anybody! Besides…it's not my blood. See?" He lifted up the hem of his shirt so Djaq could see that his skin was unmarked.

"I told you this was a bad idea the first time." Much turned on Robin, directing his anger at someone other than Allan for a change. "And somehow, we're doing it again and again! And now we're getting caught too!"

"Oi! Nobody's been caught yet! And you have the horses, don't you?"

Much's response was indistinct as he walked away, muttering to himself. Djaq found herself vaguely amused by the whole situation. It was so much like the scrapes they used to get into before that it was tempting to think of everything that had happened in the last few weeks as nothing more than a dream. But she was not a dreamer, and that was not a luxury she could afford, so she shook the emotion off as wishful thinking. She started to walk off in the direction of the clearing where they had tied up the horses, when Allan's voice broke into her thoughts.

"Hold on a minute. Where's Will?"

--

She walked towards the town of Dijon, Little John at her side. She was pleased that it was him and not Allan who had offered to accompany her to find Will, although it irked her a little that everyone had expected her to just _know_ where he was. It was almost as if they were so caught up in Robin's mission to save Marian (and the king, of course) that they had paid no attention to what was really going on with the rest of their lives. Still, she supposed that it was better than having them be too curious about her affairs. And if she were honest, their inattention bothered her far less than the fact that Will was missing, and that she had not noticed his absence for the past few hours.

That was a surprise in itself, because if there was one thing she had been doing for the past few weeks, it was noticing Will Scarlett. The irony of paying so much attention to a man she desperately wanted off her mind was not lost on Djaq, and it disturbed her that she could not find some rational explanation for her behavior.

On the ferry to France, she had spent hours pondering the problem of Will and Allan and how to get them to somehow reconcile while also removing herself from the equation. No concrete idea had come to her, and ultimately she decided that the simplest course of action was also the best. She would simply stop talking to both men. Eventually, their confusion over her actions and their loneliness would push them together. Once they had only each other to rely on, they would no longer need her, and she would be free, finally, of all the emotional burdens of the past few weeks.

So far, all signs suggested that her plan had failed utterly, as Will and Allan had not said a word to each other since their brawl. But she told herself this was one of those things that required patience and she was willing to wait. After all, their journey was far from over. As for the plan to extricate herself, she was far less certain of the outcome there.

She had been concerned at first that the two men would react badly to the cold shoulder she was giving them, and she had been fully prepared to explain her position to both of them and make them see the light. What she had not expected was that Will and Allan would also resolutely keep their distance from her. Allan's reaction was at least somewhat predictable. He was complicated, and he had a lot of pride. He would almost certainly want to figure things out himself before confronting her. But Will's behavior had left her confused and uncertain. She had been expecting him to feel hurt, to be angry and lash out at her. Instead, he had kept his distance, and except for the few times she caught him watching her, concern and confusion written on his face, he had seemed unmoved by her actions.

Oddly, this had only made her desire his company more. She had spent countless hours simply watching him, wishing she could touch him. The fact that she was acting like some pathetically besotted girl did not surprise her that much. Physical desire was something she could understand. After all, was not all of mankind dependent on it? It was the other part of her desire, the need to speak to Will, to know what he was thinking, to share with him her own thoughts, that troubled her. Why did she wish for all that, when there were others in the gang she could speak to just as easily? What was it about Will that made her heart yearn for things she could not even put it into words? Was this what it was to love someone? She was painfully aware now that her words in Nettlestone had been spoken too soon, with the confidence that there would be no consequences worth worrying about. She had said the words without understanding their true import, even as she was convinced they had been the truest words she had spoken in a very long time.

These questions fled through her mind at a dizzying pace, making it almost impossible for her to concentrate on the task at hand. Fortunately, Little John was much more steady right now than she was, and it was not long before his voice interrupted her thoughts.

"So. Where are we going?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I don't even know where to look for Will."

Little John smiled in his all-too-knowing sort of way. "That's all right. Because I know where he is."

"What? Why did you not say so before?"

He shrugged. "I thought maybe you'd want to find him yourself instead."

She frowned, not liking where he was taking their conversation.

"So where is he, then?"

"At church."

"Church?"

He nodded again. "It's where he's been going the past few weeks. Every time we go through a big town, he goes to church."

_Will was going to church?_ It was something Djaq could simply not fathom. Granted, Will was as Christian as any of the others in Robin's gang. But he had never seemed to be infected with that curious mixture of superstition and fear that marked the Christian faith. Certainly, he had never seemed as hindered by his beliefs as John, Much, or even sometimes Allan. She had never before seen him show any interest in religion, and indeed, she could not remember if Will had ever ventured near a church in England.

So why was he going now? And so often, at that? She balked at the idea that she was somehow responsible. It could not be that he was driven to religion because of her rebuff. But if she were honest, she could not deny that it was possible. Her own feelings were so scattered and uncertain, and if Will was experiencing even half of her own consternation, then surely, he would be looking for answers. And what better place to find them than in a house of God?

She shivered suddenly, realizing for the first time that she loved not just Will, not just a man, but a _Christian_ man. Confronted now with a truth she had never even considered before, Djaq cringed. Visions of the gruesome deaths of her father and brother came back to her with great force, and she fought to suppress the bitterness that rose up in her heart. _Oh, Allah! What a cruel joke you have played on me!_ She felt her knees buckle with the force of her thoughts, but John's strong arm caught her under the elbow, and she righted herself.

"Are you all right?"

She shook her head, trying to restore some order to her thoughts. "No. I mean…yes, I'm all right. Or I will be soon."

John gave her a look of grave concern, but she quieted him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Truly, I am all right. It's just too much sun…or something like that."

He nodded and they went on their way. They did not speak, and the silence would have been companionable if not for the frequent and furtive glances of worry that John threw in her direction. She rolled her eyes at him, and eventually, he shrugged and gave her a chuckle, letting her know that he had set the matter aside, at least for now.

They walked the rest of the way in peace, Djaq allowing her thoughts to turn once more to Will and her newfound worries over his Christian-ness. She was uncertain of how much distance they had covered, or indeed of exactly where they were, but just as Dijon's massive cathedral came into view, the solution to her problems suddenly came to Djaq. Will's sudden discovery of religion was her salvation, in a way. It was the sign she'd been waiting for, the one indication that her brain had been right all along, and her heart, for all its desperate craving, was wrong. It would make it easier to explain her decision to Will, because even he could have no argument against Allah, or his own God, for that matter.

Little John cleared his throat, and pointed in the direction of the town square, dominated by the church. "That's it, that church. It's where you'll find him."

Djaq nodded, but then looked at him doubtfully, something about the tone of John's voice giving her pause. "You are not coming with me?"

John looked down, suddenly interested in the tops of his own boots. "No. I'll just wait right here. You go fetch him." He nodded then, as if to reassure her that it would be all right.

She hesitated, and then, thinking that it was better to be done with all this love business sooner rather than later, she set off in the direction of the church.

--

Will ran a hand along a line that had formed in the stone of one of the church's arches. The stone below the line was marred, apparently scorched in a fire from decades before, and it made an impressive contrast with the new, almost pristine stone that had been used to rebuild the rest of the arch. This one was an abbey of some sort, and one of the brothers had explained, in a halting mixture of English and French, but with obvious pride, that it was dedicated to St. Benignus. Will had no idea who the saint was, but he could at least agree with the man's appreciation of the place. It was spectacular.

It was when they first arrived in France that he had begun to notice the churches. When he was younger, a friend of his father's, an itinerant stonemason, had told him about the great churches that were being built all over Christendom, and Will had once imagined that he would be one of the great craftsmen invited to work on such a church. But fate had intervened. His father had lost a hand, his mother had lost her life, and Will had had to bury his dreams right then and there.

But they were here in France, and he could actually see these magnificent places in all their glory. Every time they had stopped in a large town or village, he had taken the opportunity to leave the gang and visit the local church, even if only for a few minutes. He considered it would probably be his only chance to see such places, so there was no sense in wasting it. What he had seen had taken his breath away. The stonework was impressive, like nothing he had seen before in Nottinghamshire, but even more fascinating was the woodwork. There had been carved choirstalls with intricate patterns carved into the misericords, paneling that told stories from the Bible, altars with woodwork so detailed he had ached to hack off a piece and take it with him just to show the others. Whenever he left a church, he felt rewarded somehow for all the tribulations of his life.

That was not the only reason for his temporary escape from the gang, of course. The churches were magnificent and fascinating, but it was also a huge relief to be away from Djaq every now and then. He was no closer to understanding what was happening with her, save that he knew she was scared of being with him. This he could sort of understand, since the idea of being with _her_ frightened _him_ as well, but his own fear brought him no closer to a solution to her problem, _their_ problem. He wanted desperately to be able to tell her he understood, that he had no expectations of her, that he needed nothing from her, but he had no idea how to put these thoughts into words that would make sense to her and not frighten her away at the same time. So he had done the only thing he could have done. He had left her alone, hoping that having some distance between them would give her a chance to think and to work through her fear. Then maybe she would come to him, and they would finally be able to speak to each other.

He shook his head. It was all more than he wanted to think about just now. He turned away from the arch and made his way to the choirstalls with an eye to figuring out how the fantastic woodcarving had been done, when he caught a furtive movement out of the corner of his eye. Instantly on guard, he pulled out his hatchet and wheeled around, only to almost drop it in surprise.

It was Djaq.

--

"Hello, Will."

He goggled at her, the words clearly not forming properly in his mind. His expression was so odd that Djaq was tempted to laugh for a moment before she schooled herself back to seriousness.

"Djaq…what are you…I mean…how did you…?" He let his voice trail off, and then his expression changed, and he suddenly looked both amused and hopeful. "Have you been following me?"

"No! I…well, no, not exactly. I was just…curious." She had thought to say she was worried, but she changed her mind, not wanting to admit that she was concerned about him.

"And we're being chased by some goons who attacked Allan, so we should head back soon. The others are waiting."

Will nodded, and then waved her in front of him as they made their way out of the church. Djaq watched him out of the corner of her eye, trying to gauge his mood. When she had first walked into the church, she had expected to find him prostrate before his God, praying for answers and absolution and whatever else it was Christians did in their churches. Instead, she had found him admiring the stone and wood of the church, in rapt wonder at miracles made not by God, but by man.

In hindsight, she felt as if she should have guessed where Will was and what he was up to. It was just like him to be interested in how a church was built and how its decorations were carved. It was not prayer that had brought Will to God, but art. The thought made Djaq sad, made her wish that she were a different woman, or that he were a different man, or that they lived in a different time, so that this sort of art could have been something they could marvel at together instead of the thing that drove a wedge between them, separating them forever.

She sighed heavily, and the sound made Will stop and stare at her, a question in his eyes and concern in his face. She shook her head, and he nodded, but after they had walked a few more steps, he stopped again.

This time, the look he gave her was frank, but also terribly intense, and for once, Djaq was tempted to look away. Then he spoke, and some of the intensity faded.

"Nothing has to change, you know."

She raised an eyebrow at him, confused and unsure what he was saying.

"You want everything to be like it was before we…well, before." He looked away, obviously trying to find his words. "And that's all right. I understand. I still,…"

He shook his head and then fixed her with another intense stare. "Really, I mean it. Nothing has to change."

And with that, he walked away from her, leaving her staring after him. If he had hoped his words would reassure her and bring her comfort, then they had fallen far short of their mark.

--


	8. Chapter 8: Afloat

**Afloat**

_On board the ship to Acre_

Allan was enjoying himself thoroughly. He had never been aboard a real ship before, at least not on a voyage this long, and there was something about the sailor's life that appealed to him. For one, it was an actual job, being a sailor, with real wages and no worries about having a roof over your head or food on the table most of the time. For another, there was something just slightly dishonest about almost every man he had met on the ship so far. It was as if they were straddling a line between a life of thievery and an honest vocation, and Allan could not help but be impressed with that. He began to think seriously about joining a ship's crew when all of this outlaw business was over and done with.

As for the outlaws themselves, they were enjoying the journey by sea to various different degrees. It had been easy enough for Robin and Much, who had made the journey before and knew what to expect. For Little John, who did not like either the look of the water or the way the ship bounced around on it, there had been an easy escape below deck. He had not surfaced again much, except for meals or when Djaq claimed it was absolutely necessary for his health. Djaq herself had adapted well enough, although Allan thought she seemed uncomfortable somehow. He could not decide if it was merely seasickness or whether other things were troubling her as well.

He could see her now, sitting on a barrel of rope and talking to one of the deck hands. She was smiling at the man, and Allan thought it was the first time in weeks he had seen that particular expression on her face. It was a good thing she was no longer pretending to be a lad, because that smile alone was enough to give away her true identity.

It was not the first time he had felt this way, and he suspected it would not be the last, but he felt an almost desperate urge to run up to her and pull her into his arms. It took almost all of his willpower not to, even as he felt a nauseating wave of guilt come over him. It occurred to him that Will was either the most patient man in the world, or the biggest fool in it. If Allan had acted sooner, if Djaq had somehow been his, he would not have waited. He would have marked her as his, he would have made sure she had no doubts about his heart, or even her own.

But she was not his, and he had not spent the past few weeks avoiding her just to undo it all over some fleeting temptation. He had resolved some time back that he was going to help Will and Djaq with their problem. His plan had always been to approach Will, talk to him as one man to another. But Will had kept his distance, and the opportunity had never really presented itself.

Now, with darkness descending over the ocean, it struck Allan that he was going about it all wrong. Will was notoriously difficult to talk to, even on good days. But Djaq was different. She would listen; she would understand. She had tried to make him see his own nature once, and he would do the same for her now. He had to help her somehow. The wave of guilt ebbed away as he walked towards her, and in its place, Allan began to feel that familiar happy hum he got when a plan or a trick came to fruition.

"You should be careful who you smile at like that. Might give them the wrong idea."

She looked up at him, surprised at his sudden presence. But then she relaxed and smiled at him. Allan felt his resolve flag at that, but he was determined not to give in. _Not this time, mate._

He made a somewhat rude gesture in the direction of the deck hand, who seemed ready to protest but then shrugged and left. Allan flopped down on to the deck next to Djaq, pleased but also disconcerted by her nearness.

"What were you talking to him about, anyway?"

She seemed amused. "Not that it is any of your business, but he is one of the few aboard who can speak Arabic. He's been to Acre a few times before."

"Not being funny, but aren't you a bit old to be impressed with that sort of thing?"

She sighed. "I do not think he had any…intentions like that."

"Oh, he did. Trust me. Blokes always do."

"So I should thank you, then, for rescuing me?"

"No. You do fine on your own, don't you? I just thought maybe you were bored."

She looked at him frankly, her gaze steady and intense. Allan fought the urge to look away, and matched her stare. Eventually, she gave in and sighed heavily.

"Yes, well…it is a long journey and I am a bit…bored, I suppose."

"Well, I'm your man then," he said, regretting his choice of words almost instantly. He rummaged around in his pockets, finally coming up with a pair of dice. "Fancy a game?"

"I do not know how to play. And I have no money, besides."

"I can teach you…and I don't want your money."

She laughed. "Well, that is surely the first time those words have crossed your lips, Allan-a-Dale!" He laughed in response, pleased that she seemed so light-hearted and so much more like the Djaq he knew than she had been for weeks.

"See, it goes like this."

A game of liar's dice was a simple enough thing, and Djaq was a quick study, picking up the rules of the game and some of the finer nuances of deceiving her opponent in the space of just a few games. Allan was impressed and considered that she might have made an excellent trickster herself someday.

"We can make this more interesting, you know."

"I already told you, Allan. I do not have any money."

"No money needed. Just a simple wager."

She seemed doubtful, but ultimately nodded, so he continued. "Three games, and if you lose, you have to do whatever I tell you."

"I do not think…"

"C'mon, Djaq! Trust me. I wouldn't ask you to do anything bad anyhow!"

"All right, Allan. Let us play."

They had been playing for a few minutes when Allan decided he had the right opening for the conversation he wanted to have with her.

"You know what you're doing is stupid, right?"

She looked at him in confusion, and then picked up the dice and examined them. "What? I…"

"No, I don't mean the game. I mean Will. What you've been doing with Will."

She looked at him, alarmed, the color draining from her face. "With Will? This is nonsense. I have not done anything with Will!"

"That's my point. You don't even talk to the poor lad. What did he do to deserve that?"

"It is not…" She shook her head, apparently trying to collect herself. "You would not understand."

"Yeah, maybe I wouldn't understand. I don't even know what happened with you two."

He paused, giving her a chance to explain, but she said nothing, instead concentrating on her hands in her lap.

He sighed. "Look, if you don't love him, you never should have said anything in the first place. It's not fair to give a man something and take it away from him when you change your mind."

She looked up now, and she seemed to be just a little bit angry. "You do not understand. You would not speak to me this way if you did." She looked away and then sighed. "I _do _love him. But it is not so simple."

"You're right. I don't understand. If you love him, and he loves you, what more do you need?"

She began to speak, but he stopped her before she could squeak out another "you do not understand."

"Look, Djaq. The thing is….we could all be dead soon." He gestured around them. "We might not be able to save the king. Robin might get us all killed." He gestured at the ship. "Or this old thing could sink tomorrow!"

"Allan…"

"The point is, we haven't got much time left. And if our lives are going to be this short, then we should enjoy them as much as we can. Right?" Once again, he paused so she could speak, but she remained silent. "And you and Will…you should use whatever time you have left, and not waste it all trying to run away."

"I am not running…"

"As men go, you could do a lot worse than Will Scarlett." He smiled and then added, "You could have ended up with someone like me!" He ignored the rising emotion in his heart, the one that was reaching out to her, yearning for her to correct him, to tell him he was the best of all men.

"I am not…I know that Will is a good….Allan, why are you doing this?"

"Because I want to make sure you don't get too tired."

"Tired?"

"Yeah, tired. You must be knackered from trying to be everything for everybody all the time."

She stared at him, stunned into silence this time.

"The thing is….you can't sort everybody out. You have to clean your own midden before you can clean anyone else's, right?"

He was not certain she understood what he was saying, but she would, with time. He felt a sudden heaviness in his chest as he forcibly shut the door on his own feelings, on the thing he had hoped he could have for himself. He got up to leave, picking up the dice, thinking that they felt oddly like the shards of a broken heart.

"You can't fix everyone, Djaq. You can't fix me."

--

"Djaq."

She turned and nodded in his direction, but Will was relieved to see that she did not seem disturbed by his presence.

"I have the watch. You can go now." He walked to where she was standing, leaning up against the railing and looking out, apparently at nothing.

"Thank you, Will. If it is all the same to you, I would like to stay here a little while longer." She wrapped her arms around herself, as if warding off the cold even though it was a balmy afternoon. "It is…less pleasant below."

He nodded, aware that she had her reasons for not wanting to leave the deck and go below, even though she had never spoken to him about them. Not that she ever spoke to him about anything. He had thought that his attempt to set things right, his offer of friendship and _nothing more_ would have helped smooth things over. But as it turned out it had not, and if anything, things between him and Djaq were worse than they had been before.

Then again, maybe all she needed was more time. Once they made it back to the forest, _if_ they ever made it back to the forest, there would be plenty of time, for whatever it was that lay between them.

That thought, coming as it did with visions of England and Sherwood, reassured him as few things had since they had begun the journey to the Holy Land. He nodded in her direction and began to turn away, but a tug at his elbow stopped him. He pulled away abruptly, surprised by the sudden contact.

"I am sorry, Will. I just thought…we should talk."

She looked determined, if also just a bit bewildered and even a little sad. He had a sudden urge to reach out and take her hand and tell her that nothing mattered except that she was here, and that was enough for him. But he said nothing, did nothing, and eventually, she sighed and sank down to the deck. He hesitated for a moment, but then took her lead and joined her, stretching his legs out in front of him.

He was struck suddenly by the notion of how similar this was to an evening in Sherwood, even though they were an ocean away. The others were asleep, and only he and Djaq were left awake, not talking but somehow still content in each other's company. He closed his eyes, and his mind conjured up the image of Djaq poking the dying embers of the campfire with a stick, chuckling softly at something he had said.

As it turned out, the chuckling was not just in his imagination. He opened his eyes and turned to find Djaq laughing softly.

"Oh, Will. You have the biggest feet I have ever seen!"

He stared at her in amazement. "That's what you wanted to talk about? How big my feet are?"

"No. It is just that…well, I have only just noticed them!" She was a bit distraught, but not enough to keep the gently amused tone out of her voice.

"I suppose they are rather…big." He wiggled his feet theatrically, making her laugh, and after a moment he joined in, finding their situation absurd, yet somehow funny. But the laughter petered out, and too soon, they were left with only the silence between them, awkward and pregnant with the weight of all that had been left unsaid.

He cast about for things to say, clever things that would make her laugh. But that sort of thing did not come as easily to him as it did to Allan. _Allan…_

She broke the silence just as his thoughts began to darken. "You must think me terribly cruel."

He watched her a for a moment and then shook his head, trying to come up with the answer she wanted, while the rest of his mind raced ahead to solve the problem she was presenting to him.

"No, not cruel. Just…a little frightened, I think."

He braced himself, certain that Djaq would not thank him for pointing out how scared she was. But he had never lied to her, never told her anything except the complete truth, and there was no need to change that now.

She looked at him strangely, her face a mixture of awe, sadness and something else he could not quite place. "What is it that you think I'm frightened of?"

He shrugged. _Of this. Of me_. "I don't know. I think you're just scared…of something. It's like there's a question and you think you know the answer, but really, you don't." _And you're too proud to ask me to help you. _

She watched him intently, and then abruptly, she dropped his gaze and turned away.

"Will. There's something I need to know." She did not turn back to him, but she leaned a little in his direction and there was a slight hitch in her voice Will was certain he had never heard before. "That night…in the barn. If I had not spoken…would you have said anything? Anything at all?"

He hesitated, not sure why she was asking him such a thing, or where this was leading. "No. I never really meant for you to know anyway."

"Why not?"

"I…I didn't think you'd understand." He struggled to find just the right words to tell her what she needed to hear. "I didn't think you…felt what I did, so I didn't want to say anything, didn't want to be disappointed." He smiled sheepishly. "At first, I thought maybe you…that you liked Robin."

"What!?"

He ignored the question, not wanting to explain things that now seemed too far in the past to be real. "And then, later, I thought that maybe you…maybe you just didn't want any of us to…feel anything for you, maybe you just wanted us to be your friends."

"That's why I didn't say anything, why I didn't want to tell you. I wanted…I still want…I'd rather be your friend than almost anything else, Djaq."

He turned to her now, and he knew he sounded desperate and that she would think he was begging, but he was beyond caring. "Don't you think we can still be friends? Like we were before? Just friends."

For several moments, there was no answer, and to Will, the silence seemed to stretch out like the sea before them. But then she sighed and reached for his hand, threading her fingers through his. It was a wholly unexpected and oddly intimate show of affection from her, and in his heart, Will felt a tiny spark of hope.

"Oh, Will! I could never be your friend. Not now."

The spark died, and Will felt a sharp ache in his chest, a perfect companion to the sinking feeling in his stomach. She let go of his hand, but kept her gaze firmly on him.

"It would never be enough for me to just be your friend. Not now. I meant everything I said that night. I love you and I do not want to be _just friends_ with you." Her tone had changed, and he could hear her pleading for his understanding. "I do not know what I have been doing these past weeks, but it is all wrong. And I am a fool!"

"Djaq, you don't have to…"

"No…sshhhh…I have something I need to say, and I want to do it while I still have the courage, while we still have time, Will."

He nodded, and she looked away. He could tell from the way she was holding her breath, from the set of her shoulders, that she was bracing herself for what came next, and it frightened him a little.

"When my brother died, I killed her. Saffiyah." The words were coming out in a tumble, too quickly, and Will thought she might have rehearsed them, but her thoughts were too disjointed and she was too distraught for that.

"Not really, of course. She's…I'm sitting here now." She gave him a small, sad smile.

"But I wanted her to be gone forever. I wanted to bury her, because she was so…confused and full of…grief. I thought if I could put her away, I could forget. And if I forgot, then I could survive." Her hands shook as she spoke, and impulsively, he covered the one closest to him with his own. She looked up at him then, startled and then grateful, even as she drew her hand away.

"But then, that night in Nettlestone, I thought we were all going to die. And…if that was the end of my life, then…at least then, I wanted to be what I really was, who I really was."

The shadows were growing longer, dappling the deck and darkening the place where they sat. Will could barely make out the exact expressions on her face now, but she was still taut with unexpressed emotion, so he waited in silence.

"So I let Saffiyah out, and she spoke her heart, and it made her…it made me happy. For the first time in such a very long time, Will…I was happy. I was going to die a happy woman."

Her voice trailed off, and she said nothing more for a long time, so he spoke instead.

"And then Allan came."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Yes, Allan came, and we were saved. And I was glad that we had been spared." She paused and watched him intently for a few minutes. "At first."

"But then, as time went on, I did not know what to do with all of Saffiyah's feelings. I could not just put them away like I had before. I tried to, I really did."

"Djaq, you really don't need…"

She ignored his attempt to stop her. "You are right, you know. I am frightened. I do not know what to do with all these feelings. I do not know how to be everything I need to be. I do not know what you expect from me, what you want from me."

She threw up her hands in exasperation. "I do not even know what I want!"

He wished that he could tell her what he expected, what he wanted, what she needed to hear from him. But in truth, he was as frightened as she was. It was all new to him, and he had no sense of what to do or how to go about it. In a way, it was comforting to know that Djaq's fears were similar to his, his own fears reflected back at him. His own fears, at least, he could tackle, and perhaps hers were not so invincible either.

He reached out and took her hand, and this time, Djaq did not pull away, much to his relief. He entwined his fingers with hers as she had done before and took a moment to savor the feeling of her tiny hand against his own.

"You know…my father used to say that two heads were usually better than one."

She looked at him in confusion. "Two heads?"

"Yes. It's like when there is a task to do, but you don't know how to do it. You get someone to help you with it, and even if he doesn't know how to do the task either, you put your heads together and figure the problem out.

"The thing is, I'm just as scared as you are, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be around you. Most of the time, I don't even know what to say to you. But I think…if we're together, we can figure it all out somehow." He did not know what else to say, so he simply nodded in her direction.

She gave him a small and uncertain smile. "Yes. That might work." She clasped his hand just a little tighter. "Together. Like a team? I like that."

--


	9. Chapter 9: Beginnings

_So this is the end of this journey to the Holy Land for Will, Djaq and Allan, as it is the end of this story. It started off as just a germ of an idea, and one written page of text. But thanks to the insightful commentary of Biancaneve, Ravenya03 and Wenrom31, it turned into something longer and, I think, better. Many thanks to my trusty beta reader Cressida, who did a terrific job with this story, even though she's not familiar with the fandom. _

**Beginnings**

_A week later_

She was never sure how it happened. Even years later, when she thought back on it all, it never made a great deal of sense to her. But somehow she and Will had gone from barely speaking to each other to speaking almost only to each other. It was not that they were intimate, exactly, for they had shared no more than a few shy kisses, awkward and uncertain, but full of promise. But they were content, and as they walked the length of the ship's deck together, the silence between them was filled not with trepidation, but with a newfound hope.

_Hope_. It did not take Djaq long to realize that hope was the thing that ultimately brought her to Will. Although still very young, he had already lived a life's worth of tragedy, and yet had somehow remained unmarked by it all. Her own losses, the great deprivations of her life, had made her harden her heart against the world, all but shutting out the gentler emotions that marked her childhood. But hope still flourished in Will's heart, and it was like a beacon that drew her ever closer to him. She felt happy in the knowledge that though she could find little hope in her own heart, she could at least share in his.

Often, in the evenings, they sat on deck, tucked away in a corner where nobody could see them, in a place where they could pretend the rest of the world simply did not exist. Most nights, they would use this rare solitude to talk, almost always about the past, if only because this kept any discussion of the future at bay. She would tell him about her childhood, the people she had known and lost, the people who might still welcome her back when they arrived in the Holy Land. In turn, he would tell her of his own life, of what it had been like to grow up in Locksley, poor but somehow happy. She was amused by his tales, and even more by her own visions of Will as a young boy, impish and charming, before life and death and the inevitability of both had intervened and changed him forever.

Tonight, the sky was so clear that Djaq thought she could see nearly all the stars in the heavens. She had been surprised to discover that Will already knew a thing or two about stars. He could identify a few constellations and name the stars in them, although he did not know their proper Greek terms. For her part, she tried to teach him what she knew of them, which was little enough that soon they were evenly matched in their knowledge. Still, the scholar in her could not resist the temptation to test Will, so every now and then, she pointed at a star and asked Will to name it. He was more than equal to the task and even seemed a bit amused by it all.

"What's that one?" She leaned back against him, and she thought she felt his shoulders shake a little in silent laughter.

"That one? It's Orion." She turned her face to his, pleased that he had remembered. He gave her a crooked grin. "Orion, the carpenter."

She chuckled, swatting the hand that rested at her waist. "Do not be so cheeky, Will Scarlett! There are…consequences."

He laughed, and she turned to face him with the idea of scolding him with mock seriousness. Although it was dark, she could see the expression on his face, a mixture of amusement and affection and something else, something far more raw and intense, and she turned away, old fears and doubts returning at an alarming pace.

She returned her attention to the sky, trying to find the lightheartedness they had shared just moments before.

"That one, the really bright one. What is it?"

Will did not hesitate. "That's the North Star. And I knew that one before you told me about the stars. It's how travelers find their way home."

Home? Djaq stiffened, a sudden thought taking shape in her mind. Home was not a place or a destination. It was a feeling, the emotion that came with being around those who were familiar and comfortable, those who cherished you in spite of your many sins. Home was…Will. _And Allan too._

She turned her face towards Will. "You know, it reminds me of you."

"What?" He was still smiling, but he seemed a little bewildered.

She lifted a hand to his cheek. "The North Star. It reminds me of you…steady and constant, helping people find their way.

In the dark, she could barely make out his smile, his expression of slight embarrassment at the unexpected compliment. But then she felt his smile falter under her fingers as he gently moved her hand away.

"You're going to ruin this by talking about Allan, aren't you?"

Djaq sighed. They had spoken of so many things, but Allan was the one thing Will resolutely refused to discuss. A few weeks ago, she might have put his reluctance down to a petty and childish jealousy, but now she suspected that it was something that ran far deeper. Will had not yet recovered from Allan's betrayal, and she began to think that perhaps he never would, at least not completely.

She tried to focus her thoughts, to come up with a good argument that would persuade Will to see Allan differently.

"Why are you so stubborn, Will? Why will you not talk to me about Allan?"

She pushed herself away from him and turned to face him.

He said nothing, fiddling with his tool belt and not meeting her eyes, so she decided to try a different tack.

"He loves you, you know."

Will looked stunned, but recovered quickly. "Djaq…"

"And you know, deep in your heart, that you love him too. You cannot be whole without him. This," she gestured in the space between them, "cannot be right without Allan."

"That's not fair."

"It is perfectly fair. If it were not for Allan, we would not even be here! You and I…we would never have this chance."

"Is it all just so easy for you, then? To forgive Allan?" There was an angry edge to Will's voice now, and Djaq braced herself for a long argument. "He had a chance, so many chances, to make things right, but he waited until the very end, didn't he?"

"Not everyone is like you, Will."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

She ran a hand through her hair, exasperated. "It means that not everyone can…it means Allan is not like you. He does not see truth or lies the way you do."

"No. Allan only sees what is best for him, and nothing else matters."

"You can be very unkind when you put your mind to it, Will Scarlett!"

The change in her tone of voice was not lost on Will, and he was almost immediately contrite. "Djaq, I'm sorry…I never…"

She ignored him. "You are right about Allan though. He _does_ see only what is best for him. But that is because he has never had anyone teach him right from wrong. He has never had anyone to show him."

She reached out and took both his hands in her own. "Do you not see, Will? Allan is lost in this world. And you have to be his star, the one that shows him the way home."

He frowned and did not speak for a long moment. "Why me? Why not you?"

"I have made my peace with Allan. And he knows it. It is your turn now."

--

_Three days later_

Allan knew he was dreaming. This was a surprise in itself, since he rarely slept long enough to have dreams. But tonight, he was in that strange place between sleep and wakefulness, able to savor the dream while knowing that he could snap out of it whenever he wanted.

In the dream, he was running through a green field behind a small English house in a small English village, playing tag with a little girl. She had ribbons of blue silk streaming from her hair, and although Allan ran faster than her, he could never quite catch her. His fingers would just graze the ribbons before she ran out of reach. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps from inside the house, he could hear the voice of a woman, full with laughter, calling him inside. It was a pleasant enough dream, but it annoyed Allan that he could not catch the girl, or make out the voice of the woman calling to him.

"Allan….Allan!"

The voice was persistent, and as the dream began to dissolve away, it struck Allan that the voice was not very feminine either. He opened one eye and found himself squinting into the face of Will Scarlett.

He sat up, disconcerted and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Will. Wha...has something happened?"

"No. I just thought….well, I wanted to talk to you." Will frowned and then pointed at Allan's face. "What happened to your eye?"

Allan shrugged. He had forgotten that he was now sporting a rather spectacular bruise under his right eye. "I got…a bit too _lucky_ playing dice with one of the sailors."

"Ah." Will seemed relieved somehow by Allan's misfortune, perhaps even amused by it. Allan found himself fighting to quell the urge to strike him, even as Will dropped down on to his haunches next to Allan.

"I hope you at least won a lot of money." Will smiled, but it did not quite reach his eyes, and there was something forced and awkward about the way he was looking at Allan. It struck Allan that this was the first time since Portsmouth that Will had made any effort to speak to him. _He's trying. That's worth something, I reckon. _

"I did all right, but it's not really about that. The thrill is in playing the game." _And cheating…at least until you get caught. _"It's like when you finally end up with the girl you want, but you realize it was actually more fun just to chase her."

Will paled at this, and Allan cursed himself for bringing up such a topic.

"So. What was it you wanted to talk about?"

Will hesitated for a moment and then fished something out of a pocket and handed it to Allan.

It was small and flat and utterly unmistakable. Allan knew what it was even before his hand made contact with the wood, smooth and familiar under his fingers. He felt a lump form in his throat as he traced the famous pattern with the tip of a finger.

"Is this my…"

"No." Will turned away, looking out on the sea. "I tried to find it…after you…left."

Allan nodded. It was the sort of thing Will would do, or would have done before things changed, before everything went wrong.

"Where did you find the wood? You didn't cut into the ship's mast or something, did you?" Allan laughed, but even to his own ears, it sounded forced.

Will smirked and shook his head. "It's from an old barrel or something. Figured it didn't really matter to you what I used."

"Well, thanks. I mean….it's a…thanks. I probably needed a new tag anyway."

"Yeah." Allan waited for Will to say more, but he remained silent and just a bit on edge. Eventually, he got up and dusted himself off, ready to leave.

"Listen, Allan….I have to be going."

"So…did Djaq put you up to this then?"

Will had the grace to be genuinely surprised. "No, of course not." Then he shrugged. "Not really, anyway. She doesn't know."

_Not being funny, but Little John tells better lies. _

"We're square then? You and me?"

Will watched Allan intently for a moment, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed as he thought it over. "Yeah, I guess we're…square."

"And Djaq too, right?"

Once again, Will hesitated just a little before answering. "I'm sure. You always were, anyway…square with her, I think."

"Yeah. She's good like that. You and her both." He looked down at the tag, marveling at how a little piece of wood could change how a man felt about himself. "You two, you're like…

"Allan…don't."

"No, mate. It's not what you think. I just wanted to say that I think it's a good thing. You two belong together." Allan heard himself speak the words, surprised at how easily they came off his tongue, for all the pain it was costing him to say them. "You're like two halves of something." _That's the thing about halves though, innit? There's only ever two of them. _

Will looked bewildered at first, but then he collected himself and gave Allan an uncertain smile and a half-hearted clap on the shoulder.

"Yeah. Thanks."

They did not speak for the next several minutes, and Allan began to fidget, uncomfortable with all the silence. It was Will who ultimately broke the tension.

"I really do have to go now." He began to walk away, but Allan called out to him, forcing him to come back.

"So does this mean I'm forgiven, then? By Robin, I mean?"

Will shook his head and then shrugged. "I don't know. I can't really speak for Robin."

Allan suspected he looked crestfallen, because Will's expression immediately softened. "Look, Allan…Robin is….well, he's different. Just the fact that you came back is not going to be enough for him. You'll need to prove things to him…prove that you can be…er…trusted."

Allan nodded, vaguely amused that Will was giving him advice, but thankful for it all the same. He slipped the tag around his neck and held it up. "So what does it mean, then?"

"I don't know. You probably don't need to think about it so much."

"Yeah, you're right. It will sort itself out, I guess."

Will nodded and began to walk away, but then stopped and gave Allan a frank look. "I think…I think it means that…whatever else you might be, you'll always be one of us."

He didn't wait for Allan's response, which was fine, because Allan was not sure he had a fitting one this time. He watched in awe as Will walked away, and snatches of the dream he'd had earlier came back to him.

It was a sign, he supposed. No matter how hard it was to get where you wanted to go, there was always something, someone, even a pair of someones, waiting for you at the end of it all. Things were going to be all right.

***


End file.
